1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to surveillance systems including wireless security devices, and, more particularly, to the installation of surveillance systems including wireless security devices.
2. Description of the Related Art
Surveillance systems, also known as security systems, are known to include wireless security devices, such as wireless motion detectors, wireless door sensors, wireless window sensors, wireless smoke detectors, etc., for monitoring a secured area of space. The wireless devices each transmit a unique identifier, along with any state change or supervisory data, to a receiver within the system. The unique identifiers are used to verify that a transmission from a wireless device actually belongs to and is being received by the intended security system, instead of, say, being transmitted from a security system in an adjacent building. Thus, each wireless device in use by a security system must be made known to the system by its unique identifier.
Before the surveillance system is operational, each wireless device must be configured. Each input and output device has a configuration that needs to be defined in order for the device to function properly. For wireless devices, the configuration data includes supervision intervals, arming configuration, device type, and the unique identifier, among other things. It is a goal of the security system manufacturer to make the process of configuring a particular wireless device with its unique identifier as simple and as quick as possible for the installer. A traditional approach to establishing a connection within the system between a wireless device and its unique identifier has been to manually enter a series of digits of the unique identifier along with configuration data into a system controller. A human installer examines the panel configuration to determine where devices can be enrolled. The security system is placed into a special programming mode and the installer enters the unique identifier and configuration data for each device that is to be used for a particular installation. The installer then typically walks to each wireless device in turn and performs a physical test of each device in order to ensure that the unique identifiers and configuration data have been entered properly. A problem with this approach is that the process of manually entering each digit of the unique identifier information and configuration data is time-consuming and subject to installer error.
What is needed in the art is a wireless security system that can be installed without the installer having to manually enter identification information and configuration data for wireless devices.